Chapter 1: The Opium of the People

He said, “It is not your concern. I am just the dust underneath your feet.”

To provoke that man, I said, “That’s right!”

Immediately he became angry. He said, “You tell me that I am just the dust under your feet?”

I said, “I have not said anything. You were saying it, I simply agreed.”

Humbleness, or any other quality which makes you religious, if practiced from the outside makes you an actor. If it arises from the inside, out of your own experience of the intelligence of existence, then it has a different flavor, a different fragrance - the fragrance of the freshly-opened rose.

Then you are neither egoist nor humble, because humbleness and ego, both are two sides of the same phenomenon. You simply are. This being, simply to be, makes you enlightened, gives you new insight into matters.

It happened in America, when they were celebrating some birth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln. They searched all over America for a man who would look like Abraham Lincoln - and they found him. A man looked almost the same, so they chose that man, they trained him.

Abraham Lincoln used to stutter a little, so that man had to be trained to stutter. Abraham Lincoln was a little lame in one foot, so he started walking like a lame person. One year’s continuous training.and the next year they were going to celebrate the birthday the whole year, all over America.

In one year of continuously practicing and practicing and practicing, and then the second year going from one city to another city, from one part to another part, and playing the role of Abraham Lincoln, the man became so much obsessed with the idea that when he came home he came as a lame man, stuttering.

First the family thought that he was joking. The festival was over. They told him, “Now you don’t have to do all this.”

He said, “What do you mean? I am Abraham Lincoln.” Those two years had got into his head.

They thought he would calm down, but he did not. Those two years had been too heavy and hot. He was calm and cool, and absolutely certain that he was Abraham Lincoln.

They took him to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist tried in every possible way, but with no success at all. He was feeling very much harassed and tortured by everybody in his town, by his friends, by his family. And now the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts - they started harassing him.